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Master of Science in Health InformaticsPost-Master's Certificate in Health Informatics

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The Master of Science in Health Informatics and the Post-Master’s Certificate in Health Informatics programs include the interdisciplinary study of the application of technology and knowledge to improve patient care and outcomes.

New for 2018, the Master of Science in Health Informatics program is adding a Health Data Science (HDS) concentration. This new concentration addresses a job market gap and prepares students for the data analytics profession.

Overview of the Programs

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD
Candidates for the health informatics program tend to have some professional experience within the healthcare or information technology fields.

Built on the business school model, the online Master of Science in Health Informatics program at UIC offers an advanced education designed to provide you with the understanding of technical knowledge, work experience and leadership skills to apply health data and knowledge that are revolutionizing the healthcare industry and advance the overall delivery of patient care around the world.

Through completion of this 100 percent online, comprehensive degree program, you can gain a fresh perspective on the dynamic role health information technology will play in the future of the healthcare industry as a whole. Graduates of this program are poised to lead their respective organizations in the development and implementation of health informatics strategies to improve patient care and ensure access to information.

Mike Dieter

Candidates for the health informatics program have professional experience within the healthcare or information technology fields.Read Transcription >

Typically, the candidates have some sort of professional experience in their background that comes from either in healthcare or in information technology. That would, I would say, constitutes the bulk of most of the candidates for admission to the program. I would say, in general, candidates in the healthcare field tend to outnumber candidates in the IT field. Really, that depends on what the job market is in IT which is a little more volatile than in healthcare.

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD
Students in the MS HI program come from a variety of backgrounds including nurses and physicians.

Develop your research and analysis skills to be able to meet the future shift in the health informatics field. Students who have a passion for delving deeper into data analysis and research have the option to extend their health informatics degree to include a specialty in research. Developing these skills provides a greater position for future analysis of the data derived from the information systems being created.

Health Informatics research at UIC includes the development of theories, methods and processes to create, accumulate, recover and apply data to solve patient care delivery problems or to answer patient care questions. The research track includes two additional courses, as well as a research project and thesis.

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD

Students in the MSHI program come from a variety of backgrounds including nurses and physicians.Read Transcription >

They occupy a range of roles in health care, anything from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, people in all the aligned health sciences, physical therapy, laboratory sciences, the whole range. I would say we have probably a lot of nurses and a lot of physicians in our current admissions folders.

MIke Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD
Students with a background in IT are also common in UIC’s health informatics programs.

Build upon your current master’s education with an abridged graduate program in health informatics. This graduate-level certificate is a perfect accompaniment to your existing master’s or professional degree, qualifying you as a strong candidate for health informatics career opportunities. With only seven required courses and 24 credit hours, this degree is easily attainable, yet offers a thorough study of how to use data and technology to enhance patient care and create improved, more resourceful healthcare information systems.

Students will examine how data is collected and stored, perform system analysis of the different types of health information systems, and study the legal and ethical issues involved with informatics and personal health records. The program will also explore management and communication in health informatics, address the social and organizational issues involved with health information management, and more.

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD

Students with a background in IT are also common in UIC's health informatics programs.Read Transcription >

IT people are generally from roles that are systems level-type roles were they do process re-enginnering and systems design and things like that. We do have people that are more ... Very few people from the programing type roles that more ... the higher level of IT roles and that would include management of information systems types of roles.

Health Informatics at UIC

There is a growing need for trained informaticists. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare will produce more new IT jobs through 2020 than any other industry, with a projected increase of 21%.

Graduates of the UIC health informatics program are well-equipped to move into a career in this field, whether the focus is on computers, technology and implementation, or clinical and medical data research and analysis. UIC encompasses all of the major areas, enabling graduates to qualify for a broader range of informatics positions.

The Numbers Behind UIC's MSHI Graduates

79% said the degree helped them advance in the field

47% said the degree helped them receive a promotion

64% said they received a salary increase after they completed the program

Who Should Choose This Degree?

Health informatics is a growing field and is currently presenting a lot of opportunities for those committed to improving health care delivery using information and communications technology. Our student body is made up of individuals from various backgrounds, including but not limited to nursing, pharmacy, information technologists, health care administration, public health, business and those already working in the industry.

Nurse informaticists seek to continually improve the communication and accuracy of patient data and care. When the charts are complete and up-to-date, the ability of health care workers to make good decisions is greatly enhanced. Because of the nurses’ clinical background and medical expertise, they are ideal candidates for the unique jobs being created to fill this critical need in the healthcare sector.

Pharmacists provide the expertise to effectively translate and seamlessly communicate the knowledge and use of medications across the patient providers. They can interpret and implement requirements to ensure the safe and comprehensive administration of medication prescriptions.

Applied Health Professionals help standardize specific elements of training programs for the systems which are developed, integrated and implemented for healthcare organizations. This will help ensure more staff and clinicians are properly trained to use the new technology to support decisions and improve workflow.

The physician uses medical informatics to store critical information on a patient’s treatment and overall health. Capturing the appropriate medical data and accurately displaying the necessary information faster and easier allows the physician to make the best possible decision for the patient’s health. Medical Informatics encompasses people, information and technology to organize and structure medical data into a comprehensive information system that can also be used to transmit and teach medical knowledge.

Faculty

The curriculum is complemented by faculty who are distinguished as experts in their industry. It includes distinguished professionals who have experience as clinicians, business executives, consultants, researchers, administrators, published authors, lawyers, systems administrators, and medical educators in multiple markets, Fortune 500 companies, and top academic institutions, and who bring an unprecedented level of expertise, real-world experience and commitment to our online classrooms.

UIC's mission is to advance the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare through improved generation, management and communication in biomedical and other healthcare data. UIC's mission is to advance the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare through improved generation, management and communication in biomedical and other healthcare data. UIC's mission is to advance the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare through improved generation, management and communication in biomedical and other healthcare data. UIC's mission is to advance the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare through improved generation, management and communication in biomedical and other healthcare data.

Michael (Mike) Dieter, PhD, MLIS, MBA

Well I think anyone who is committed to improving health care delivery using information and communications technology should consider it. There are a lot of opportunities for people entering the field now. The field's really in the process of being defined by those who are working in it currently. So there's a real opportunity to create careers rather than just simply jobs.

Andrew Boyd, MD

My name is Andy Boyd. I am a faculty member in the department of Biomedical and Health Information services. I teach in the Health Informatics program. The course I teach is Introduction to Informatics for the Clinical Investigators. For the health informaticians many of them work at academic medical centers and do clinical research.

Clinical Research Informatics is an area where how do we create tools to help harness the data from the EHR for Clinical Research to accelerate medicine as well as how do we record the data in ways to help them keep their data, keep it solid and if people make mistakes, how do we go back and get the authentic data so, people aren’t accidently writing-over each others data? How do you keep it HIPA secure? If you’re doing an FDA approved trial, how do you keep it 21 CFR Part 11? Within the curriculum, I teach the course of Introduction to Informatics for the Clinical investigator.

I also have my own research and my research is ‘Data simplification in order to improve clinical outcomes’ focusing predominantly on the patient. When you consider health data, this is the most complex data you’re ever going to encounter. Here at UIC we have seven health colleges. There is no way a patient can ever go to all seven health profession in order to understand their own health data.

How do we take this diversity of opinion and present it to the patient to help engage them to become a true partner in their care, because obviously no one is going to go to seven different health sciences colleges in seven different degrees. Again, how do you take this health data transform it in order to help engage the patients in naval ways to help them become better partners in their own care?

Jacob Krive, PhD, MBA, MS, CPHIMS

I think, at this point, we've passed the initial phase of implementation when patients records have been digitized in so called electronic medical records. Physicians are ordering their medications and other clinical orders in electronically, so it will be a matter of taking that next step and actually utilizing this wealth of digital data and making sense out of it.
If you think of it as the height curve, the height curve has gone significantly down when it comes to electronic medical records. Most health care organizations, most progressive ones, already have them. Everybody else who doesn't, probably never will.
At this point, it's a matter of utilizing this data and actually converging medical and computer sciences to move into areas of predictive analytics and producing decision enhancing tools. Down in the future, we may be talking about predicting human behavior, so adding social sciences to the mix.

Curriculum

The curriculum blends a technical foundation with coursework covering current clinical trends, government regulations, and healthcare-specific best management practices. It equips students with the analytical and managerial expertise sought after in this dynamic field.

Jacob Krive, PhD, MBA, MS, CPHIMSThe faculty at UIC is made up of researchers, educators and practitioners that are heavily involved within the program. The curriculum is designed to equip students with relevant and timely information based on recent industry findings.

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhDStudents of the health informatics program will work on a number of course based projects like systems design, networking and network analysis. Students who elect to participate in the research track will be able to define a research area and a research problem that they will be able to include into their professional portfolio.

Jacob Krive, PhD, MBA, MS, CPHIMS

The faculty at UIC is made up of researchers, educators and practitioners who are heavily involved within the program. The curriculum is designed to equip students with relevant and timely information based on recent industry findings.Read Transcription >

We track what happens in the industry. There is a good mix of researchers, educators, and practitioners involved in the program, including curriculum design. There is the base curriculum that gives people an opportunity to learn the basics, but we accept students from a variety of backgrounds including experienced students who are already in the biomedical and hermetics field. For them, there is a variety of options available in more advanced courses that are actually in-line with what is happening in the industry. We keep creating these courses and there are people in the department who actually perform cutting-edge research. This research is being quickly inserted into the curriculum so that students get the latest and they come out from the program actually ready for any path that they decide to pursue, whether it's practical application as part of a health care system or health practice, or continue on in a research path.

Mike Dieter, MLIS, MBA, PhD

Students of the health informatics program will work on a number of course-based projects like systems design, networking and network analysis. Students who elect to participate in the research track will be able to define a research area and a research problem that they will be able to include into their professional portfolio.Read Transcription >

While there are a number of course specific types of projects, typically these are group projects and individual ... a number of courses like ... at the technological pole of the curriculum: systems design, networking, network analysis. All these have more or less case based or problem based, project based learning as their core for performance in the course. We do have a research track in the curriculum and there students are able to more individually define a research area and a research problem that they can use as something to put in their professional portfolio. So it represents a real accomplishment in terms of creating a value object that can go into their professional narrative.

The graduate-level curriculum in Health Informatics at the University of Illinois at Chicago provides you with a comprehensive, real-world approach to systems integration within the healthcare industry. This dynamic degree program encompasses the broad study of how healthcare data are collected into electronic health records (EHR), as well as how information technology systems are built to effectively house and circulate this data across organizations. In addition to delivering a solid foundation of technical knowledge, the 100 percent online curriculum also covers a wide range of industry-relevant topics, including clinical trends, government regulations and healthcare management best practices.

Upon completing the MSHI 13-course program, consisting of 38 credit hours, graduates will have a thorough understanding of the tools and practices used to improve the use of information technology throughout all facets of healthcare (including nursing, pharmacy, clinical care, public health and medical research).

Additional Core – Course Only Track

BHIS 530 Topics in Health Informatics 3 hours

As more and more healthcare organizations successfully implement electronic health records during the next few years, there will be greater opportunities for skilled professionals to advance in data mining and analysis, quality improvement, performance measurement and research roles.

If you have a passion for delving deeper into data analysis and research, you have the option to extend your health informatics education to include a specialty in research.

The online Post-Master’s Certificate in Health Informatics at UIC draws from the popular curriculum of our distinguished Master of Science in Health Informatics program. It serves as the perfect complement to your existing master’s degree, and it is designed to expand your educational background to help launch or advance your career in the dynamic field of health informatics. With only seven required courses and 24 credit hours offered 100 percent online, this certificate is easily attainable. It provides a thorough study of how data and technology can be used to enhance patient care and create improved, more resourceful healthcare information systems.

Prerequisite Courses (may be waived in some instances or may be completed at another college/university)

FAQs

1. What is the length of program and cost?

The average student completes the MSHI program in about 2 to 2 ½ years; however, you have up to six years to complete once you have started. The average student completes the PMC HI program in about 18 months; however, you have up to three years to complete once you have started. The current tuition is $750 per credit. Required MSHI credits are 38 to 42. Required PMC HI credits are 24 to 29.

3. What salary can they expect?

The most accurate national information can obtained from current job postings (healthcare IT recruiters like healthcareitcentral.com, the HIMSS.org JobMine, etc. and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but recently surveyed UIC grads had salary ranges between $75,000 and $150,000 per year.

4. What are our program graduates doing now and what are their salaries – did they get an increase in pay?

Recently surveyed UIC grads had salary ranges between $75,000 and $150,000 per year, and 64 percent of them indicated that they received a salary increase after completing the MSHI program. Some current job titles include those mentioned above, as well as Chief Medical Information Officer, Senior Director of Technology, Director of Regional Health IT and Director of Commercial Managed Care.

5. Are there scholarships, financial aid or other ways to fund my education?

Most of our students are able to fully fund the program using federal financial aid in the form of graduate student loans. There are two scholarship opportunities that provide some supplemental assistance to those who qualify after having been in the program for a number of credit hours.

6. What are the online course expectations?

The program is asynchronous with the primary assignments being discussion posts, group and individual projects, “minute papers” and some occasional tests and quizzes. The average student spends 25-30 hours per week on a 3- or 4-credit hour class. Students are not required to log in at any particular time of day, for any length of time, or for a certain number of times, but our most successful students log in daily.

7. With this program, am I going to get a certification in informatics?

There is currently no general certification for informatics. This is a relatively young field with most recognizing its emergence as an organized profession in the 1980s and is a very broad field requiring a hybrid knowledge base (clinical, technical, business). As such, there is no credentialing exam at this point.

8. What credential is associated with health informatics?

There is currently no credential associated with informatics. The credential associated with this program would be the MS in HI or PMC in HI.

9. Is the Post-Master’s Certificate still looked at the same way as a degree?

Yes, it is a complement your existing degree(s). Our applicants to the PMC in HI already have excellent work backgrounds and advanced degrees. The PMC in HI is a way to add formal training and graduate education in informatics from a top-tier research institution to your resume or CV.

10. Do I need the GRE?

No.

11. Is it 100% online?

Yes. There is a practicum toward the end of the program that is completed at a facility in your area, but all the coursework is online.

12. Why should I choose UIC over another school?

The University of Illinois at Chicago delivers some of the most innovative and comprehensive Health Informatics and Health Information Management programs in the country. We offer a full suite of healthcare IT degrees 100 percent online. Designed to provide a transformative learning experience that combines academic theory with real-world application, these dynamic programs impart the technical knowledge and professional acumen necessary to help you successfully navigate today’s increasingly complex electronic health environment. Whether you’re new to the field or an established practitioner, our advanced degree and certificate programs can prepare you to make an immediate impact within your organization and play a vital role in the evolution of the healthcare industry as a whole.

13. Why can’t I complete the MSHI in 18 months? Many competitors are now offering accelerated programs.

Many competitors are now offering accelerated programs. The MS in HI is an investment in the student’s future and requires a commitment to quality; students in the MS in HI program spend 25-30 hours per week on their coursework. Accelerating the program would increase the time commitment. Additionally, many of our applicants are seasoned professionals who actually prefer to take a little longer to finish the program (you have up to 6 years) in order to better balance work/life/school commitments.